National Geographic Society Committee for Research and Exploration Research Grant

IUCN Member and Specialist, Species Survival Commission, Molluscs

Maybelle Felker Roth ARCS Award for Conservation Biology

Conchologists of America Walter Sage Memorial Award

University of Chicago William Rainey Harper Fellowship

Field Museum of Natural History Brown Family Fellowship

Research Interests

I study the patterns of biological diversification and the factors underlying those patterns (e.g. the role of ecology in evolutionary radiations). Most of my work centers around phylogenetics, biogeography and morphological evolution. I am particularly interested in the geological history of a particular place and how the interplay between that history and current ecological factors contributed to the biotas we see today (e.g. on Pacific islands). My research organisms tend to be of the oft-neglected "little brown" variety, which in my case are sometimes microscopic. Most animal species are small-bodied and inconspicuous, yet we understand relatively little about their evolution and ecology relative to their more charismatic counterparts. Therefore I prefer to look in the generally ignored nooks and crannies of the Earth, such as crevices in limestone karst on the Pacific islands of Belau, or between grains of sand in marine and freshwater habitats. Why are there so many species and how did they come to be where they are?

Underlying this work is a strong conservation focus. Despite their tiny size, many of the species I study are rapidly going extinct (e.g. Pacific island land snails). Still others may prove useful as indicators of environmental health. If we conserve land snails we also help keep forests healthy. Healthy forests and soils are important for many reasons, including their use as watersheds and as filtration systems that protect surrounding aquatic ecosystems like coral reefs.

About Me

I grew up in the foothills of the northern Adirondacks, in a very small town called Chateaugay, NY. I was lucky to spend my summers as a kid camping, collecting praying mantises and butterflies, and climbing mountains. I have always been obsessed with animals and being outdoors, and by about second grade or so I decided I wanted to be a marine biologist (even though I generally only saw the ocean a few days per year!). With this in mind I finally made it to Cornell University where I had the chance to take a summer field course in Field Marine Science at Shoals Marine Lab (Appledore Island, Gulf of Maine). It was there that my interest in invertebrates was sparked. My later undergrad courses in Evolution and fish systematics further shaped my path, and I was fortunate to pursue undergrad research in Carl Hopkins Lab in the Dept. of Neurobiology & Behavior at Cornell. Under Carl's mentorship I worked on a couple of species in a species flock of electric fishes from Gabon (which I still think about in my speciation research). I was lucky to have some other great mentors at that time, including J.B. Heiser, Amy McCune, Kraig Adler and fellow members of the Cornell Herpetological Society.

After graduation I decided if I was going to become an evolutionary biologist I needed to know more about paleontology. A little known fact: if you are an evolutionary biologist, you need to know everything! I started work at the Paleontological Research Institution (PRI) where I was free to do an enormous variety of things (including collections work and exhibits), finally working with Warren Allmon as Assistant to the Director. This was at the beginning of what is now the Museum of the Earth (Ithaca, NY). While at PRI, the curator of the Cornell University Malacology Collection, Robin Hadlock Seeley, told me about this interesting opportunity to study land snails in Hawaii and Samoa. The rest is history, as they say.

My adviser Rob Cowie (a past student of evolutionary biologists and snailers Arthur Cain and Steve Jones), took me into the ohia-lehua/hapuu fern forest on the Big Island of Hawaii, and I was hooked—on island evolution, on the rainforest, and on tiny brown snails. While at University of Hawaii at Manoa and the Bishop Museum I worked on the diversification of endemic succineid land snails and learned a huge amount about conservation (including working on captive breeding of endangered tree snails). I later moved to the University of Chicago, a mecca for evolutionary biology. There I had the freedom to pursue any project I could successfully execute, and I also had the benefit of the organismal biology community at the Field Museum of Natural History (including the Pritzker Laboratory for Molecular Systematics and Evolution). While at Chicago, I embarked on a project focused on the diversification of rock and leaf litter-dwelling diplommatinid land snails from Belau, which forms the basis of my current research. My advisers at Chicago were Rudiger Bieler and Paul Goldstein, and my committee members were David Jablonski, Trevor Price and Shannon Hackett.

I then moved on to do a post doc in the lab of Brian Leander at UBC in British Columbia—finally reaching my dream of becoming a "real" marine biologist. There I worked on the discovery and morphological evolution of interstitial marine invertebrates (meiofauna) from the Pacific northwest and Hawaii. I also contributed to invertebrates and evolution exhibits at UBC's new Beaty Biodiversity Museum. Following this experience I moved to Mike Barker's Lab at the University of Arizona, as a G. G. Simpson post doc. While working with Mike I used bioinformatics approaches and worked on a variety of questions, including the role of whole genome duplication in diversification. After riccocheting around the country, I am thrilled to be working at ESF, where I finally have the opportunity to contribute to the very places that inspired me as a kid.